An article in the Financial Review this morning (Government jobs growth masks softer employment market) prompted me to examine the Queensland public service data more closely. Given the significant Queensland public service (QPS) job cuts over the last nine months, I doubt Queensland is contributing to the growth in public administration, education and health jobs observed across the country as a whole. That said, fewer QPS jobs were lost in health and education than might have been expected, if total job losses between 30 June and 31 December 2012, some 9,900 full-time equivalent (FTE) jobs, were pro-rated across agencies according to their employment levels (see chart below covering top 20 agencies by job losses). The difference between actual and “expected” job losses for health and education is no doubt due to the desire to protect front-line jobs. This would also explain the protection of jobs in the Police Service.

Transport and Main Roads, by contrast, experienced many more job losses than would have been expected based on their size. I expect this was due to lingering inefficiencies that existed in the organisation following the merger of Transport and Main Roads into the one agency a few years ago.

2 Responses to How were job losses shared across Qld Government agencies?

I am waiting for the Public Service Commission (PSC) publication “State of the Service Report” to be updated. I raised my concerns with the PSC recently that the most recent State of the Service Report was 2010 and respectfully suggested that the PSC was in part responsible for the need of the current “renewal process” and questioned how they could embark on the renewal process without a current state of the service report. In other words the reduction in numbers are merely driven by quotas, nothing more. It will be interesting to see if their strategies (and I use the term loosely) transcends to a cost effective improved service delivery to the public which is the overall objective, as I understand or is mere culling of the public service for no other reason than because they can. I am not a past or current state public servant but one who is merely interested in public administration.